While digging around for some information recently, what was accidentally unearthed was a list of nations of the world lined up according to population. It has long been an assumption that such knowledge carefully noted at least in passing for nearly seventy years was relatively substantial. It was another blow to the ego when a fast look down the list prompted mostly by curiosity showed a woeful lack of knowledge. There were once geography, history and political science classes as well as the kind of odd bits of information people remember. There was once a bit of smug pride in being able to name all fifty U.S. States in less than fifty seconds…. Well, no more.

Someone once said something about the older one gets the more one realizes how little one knows. Rarely has it been truer than with that list. It was never fully realized that, population-wise, the United States is the third largest nation in the world. It’s of course far smaller than China and India, but in today’s world number three is not the likes of “England” or Russia. Both Russia and the United Kingdom (taken apart from The Commonwealth, and it is) have far less population. A second surprise there was that Brazil is fifth on the list. For the record: China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil. The rest are under two hundred million people.

It was, of course, known that there are tiny countries, such as Monaco, that no nation seems to bother with for conquest. Among other things one might reasonably ask, well, what natural resources are there that might be exploited on a large scale or the like. But, what is surprising in that respect is the actual number of such tiny nations. Nearly eighty places on the list have less than a million people. Again, for the record, the bottom of the list says Pitcairn Islands, population forty-eight (48) in 2012. That one is kind of hard to imagine as a nation, although there are quite a number with a claim of only a few thousand people.

What’s happening “out there somewhere” right now has repercussions all through an ordinary day for maybe everyone indirectly. It doesn’t affect everyone directly, but there are repercussions throughout society day by day or inch by inch. What it boils down to is this: school is starting and families with students (especially those with mothers who hold jobs and have small children) are changing their routines. Case in point: if there’s no school, working mothers need reliable baby-sitters. When there is school, they don’t need the baby-sitters when the children are in school. Grandparents and the like are free to do other things when the kids are in school.

The shift goes all the way through the college level in different ways and one need not be related to any student. The high school student who ran errands for the neighbor is not going to be running errands. The college student from down the street wanting to earn a few dollars painting the garage is not going to be around to do any more of it at the present time. Anyone who made a deal for any such thing has to find someone else to do the whatever. And, the shift is fairly permanent. There will be a sort of shift back when school let’s out come summer, but it’s likely to be different people around as everyone is about a year older.

An old folks’ home may not house any children, but it may very well house a couple of needed grandparents. Even when the management frowns on baby-sitting activities (and they do), angles will be figured out whereby parents will be able to go do things. Although the shift is particularly noticeable among contract workers (work when you want to work), understandably the individuals most determined to figure out an angle are those with a substantial and concrete set up. In other words, it also doesn’t pay to say much about visiting grandchildren if it leads to personal annoyance if there be any expectation of seeing the people again.

Yes, it’s time for a picture or two, partly because the most recent postings were rather heavy…. This is kind of cute and something most anyone can sometimes forget.

It’s not unusual to run across one of the several “green” images that are well known, like “Save The Earth.” Some might be a bit surprised to know there is also one that says “Save The Sea,” although it does make sense that there should be such a thing. Here’s one….

It’s very hard to avoid a topic of medical care at the moment not only because it’s part and parcel of life in the old folks’ home (senior retirement community) and riding the news of late, but because at the moment it’s personally overwhelming. A first-hand report is probably now or never. It’s easier to be objective and more balanced if one is on the outside looking in rather than in the middle of some activity; but, on the other hand, personal experiences can make something more real and more informative if presented without the likes of a load of emotionalism or boring details. (It’s the pain in the foot that keeps the topic in mind at present.)

As noted last week, these days it is said one does not need to go to a doctor’s office (as in days of old) as the doctor will go to a person’s house – at least sometimes for some people. The government is happy with the idea as in some cases it’s cheaper living. Well, one should not be expecting an actual M.D. kind of person with much experience. The advertising is for companies (not individual doctors) that hire other expertise that can do much of what an M.D. does, just not as much. Specialists and surgeons are not too much in the picture. The odds are one will be seeing nurse practitioners of some sort. They do doctoring, not nursing….

Nursing – home nursing – is an entirely different matter, to the point where Medicare payments are completely different from that of doctoring services. Nursing service is based on doctors orders (even the near-to-it versions) and nurses won’t do anything else. It’s a powerfully structured line up with sharp distinction which partly boils down to who will be sued. That’s not always best, as the doctor (or “doctor”) may very well be quite incompetent. Advertising for nursing services, likewise by corporate entities. is more extensive than that for the doctor corporations because there are more of them and they are competing like any other business.